“Bush Screwed the Working and Middle Class.” How?

I was in a discussion where someone stated “Bush screwed the middle and working class.” My reply was to ask exactly how he screwed them. We then got into a discussion about corporations, tax breaks, and outsourcing. But it really made me wonder: do people know the difference between when something the government does puts them in a bad situation, vs when they themselves do it? When they hear that a policy or program is bad, or doesn’t benefit them, do they actually do the research to find out why? Or do they simply believe what they hear and don’t research for themselves?

Its apparent that many people don’t bother to find things out for themselves. We are a nation of people who tend to enjoy being led around by the nose, trusting others to tell us what we need to know instead of finding out for ourselves.

In the end, I didn’t get an answer as to how Bush screwed the working and middle class. I’m sure someone has an example.

Because the tax-cuts left the majority of the tax burden on the rest of the working class and drove after tax income down. These tax cuts also drove down the budgets for social security, medicare, infrastructure, and education, not to mention that Bush, himself, stated that one of the biggest causes of the downward slope of income earnings was due to employee qualifications, such as, education.

Then there’s the housing market crash, which the profits of pre-crash, drove the majority of any economic growth that can be measured under Bush. I would say that the middle class took a major hit from this, wouldn’t you?

First, the bush tax cuts actually shifted more of the tax burden to the HIGHER income tax earners. do a search on how much income tax was paid by folks before and after the tax cuts and you’ll see that its true. plus, the tax cuts actually increased tax revenues to the government. if there was a reduction of budgets, it was due to excessive spending in other areas. Regarding the housing crash, I can’t totally absolve Bush, but the deregulation that enabled banks to do what they did was signed in 1999, when clinton was still in office.

I would add, in response to the question of “How does someone else’s tax cut negatively affect you?”, that most income earners pay more in social security payroll taxes than the top 1% because they are exempt.

everyone pays the same percentage of their income to social security. Yes there is a cap where the deduction stops (currently 106k i think, but it goes up annually). But the top 1% of wage earners pay into it just like everyone else. And since they all go over the cap, that means they pay the max amount possible into the system. the majority of wage earners do not.